his own buckets had been at the
stable and thus were safe. He had just released Croppie and seen her
begin her breakfast on the grass, when Patience in her little red hood
came tripping through the glen with a broom over her shoulder, and
without the other children. Goody Grace had undertaken to keep them for
the day, whilst Patience worked with her brother, and had further lent
her the broom till she could make another, for all the country brooms
of that time were home-made with the heather and the birch. She had
likewise brought a barley cake, on which and on the milk the pair made
their breakfast, Goody providing for the little ones.

"We must use it up," said Patience, "for we have got no churn."

"And we could not get into the town to sell the butter if we had,"
returned her brother. "We had better take it up to some one in the
village who might give us something for it, bread or cheese maybe."

"I would like to make my own butter," sighed Patience, whose mother's
cleanly habits had made her famous for it.

"So you shall some day, Patty," said her brother, "but there's no
getting into Bristol to buy one or to sell butter now. Hark! they are
beginning again," as the growl of a heavy piece of cannon shook the
ground.

"I wonder where our Jeph is," said the little girl sadly. "How could he
like to go among all those cruel fighting men? You won't go, Stead?"

"No, indeed, I have got something else to do."

The children were hard at work all the time. They cleared out the inside
of their hovel, which had a floor of what was called lime ash, trodden
hard, and not much cracked. Probably other hermits in earlier times
had made the place habitable before the expelled monk whom the
Kentons' great-grandfather recollected; for the cell, though rude, was
wonderfully strong, and the stone walls were very stout and thick, after
the fashion of the middle ages. There was a large flat stone to serve as
a hearth, and an opening at the top for smoke with a couple of big slaty
stones bent towards one another over it as a break to the force of the
rain. The children might have been worse off though there was no window,
and no door to close the opening. That mattered the less in the summer
weather, and before winter came, Stead thought he could close it with
a mat made of the bulrushes that stood up in the brook, lifting their
tall, black heads.

Straw must serve for their beds till they could get some sacking to
stuff it into,